Mr. Rontjen Perera writes from Cairo (The Island
July 14) that the mobs of July 1983 in Sri Lanka "were similar to the mobs
in Los Angeles, Nottinghill or when the Bastille during the French
Revolution was stormed or when Indira Gandhi was assassinated."

Mr Perera is not merely demonstrating staggering
illiteracy concerning a landmark of history when he mentions the Bastille,
but also insulting a great nation, France. This is especially ironic
because we celebrated Bastille Day, which is France’s National Day,
yesterday, June 14th. The French masses who stormed the Bastille were not
attacking people of another ethnicity because of their ethnicity. They
were revolting against their own ruling class, freeing the long standing
prisoners of the French ancien regime, fired up by the ideals of
the Enlightenment, the thinking of Montesquieu and Rousseau, which went on
to inspire democratic revolutions and causes the world over, influenced
the American Constitution, and one and a half centuries later, the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

By contrast no one embraces and enshrines the ideas and
ideology of the mobs of July ’83 and what they represented. Only a fascist
would, but not even a fascist has come forward to do so.

The riots of Notting Hill and Los Angeles were against
racism on the part of the authorities. The LA riot occurred because
members of the law enforcement authorities mercilessly beat an unarmed
black motorist, Rodney King, and despite the scene being on video, the
policemen were acquitted. The dynamics of July ’83 were very different.

Nowhere in my article have I blamed the entire Sinhala
nation (or "race" as Rontjen Perera puts it) for the "mob activity" of
July 83. However, the mobs were motivated not only by greed as Mr. Perera
implies (in which case they would have limited themselves to looting, not
murder), but by anti-Tamil racism.